Crain's New York Business reports on the fate of a New York City jewelery prototyping company, Tech-Designs, who produce one-of-a-kind jewelery models for designers far and wide.

Amazingly, Tech-Designs, who have a staff of only three people, also have a fleet of seven 3D printers, which are kept busy printing six days a week. The printers are from Solidscape, who manufacture specialized dental printers. We suppose they also print jewelry equally as well, since Tech-Designs uses typical 3D modelling software to transform designer ideas into 3D models suitable for printing.

While this rapid-prototyping approach may be more common these days, there's an interesting twist. According to Tech-Designs founder Carlos Zamora:

There are a lot of jewelry companies outsourcing to China now, and I could not compete with those prices and the labor. If it were not for this, I don't think I'd be in business. It means I can be price-competitive and keep the work here in the United States.

So we see robotic labor competing full-on against human labor, in a contest that surely won't be the last of its type. We're wondering if this pattern will spread widely, driven buy competitive forces, leading to a society of creatives masterminding squads of manufacturing robots. Advice to youngsters: brush up your design skills, you many need them.

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has been writing Fabbaloo posts since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!

Fabbaloo is a daily online publication focusing on the 3D print and additive manufacturing industries. We provide deeper analysis of developments in current and future technologies as well as corporate matters. If there’s something happening in 3D technologies, especially FDM, SLA, SLS and Stereolithography, we’ll have an opinion about it.